I’m just getting into 3d printing and I’m looking for some recommendations. My budget is $400 and I’ve narrowed it down to the sv06+ or the Ender-3 V3. I like that the print size is bigger on the sv06+ but all reviews point to the Ender, do you guys have any recommendations for me?
Also maybe the bambu a1? Or a1 mini? I don’t like that the firmware isn’t open source though.
I’m OK tinkering but just want some insight.
Thanks!
I’m a fan of the Bambu printers because they just simply work.
You want to print something, they print something, done.
If you want to fiddle, then they’re the wrong printers, but if you want to model shit and make things then they’re really hard to beat right now.
And, yes, I have reservations about the closed sourced nature, but honestly ask yourself: are you going to contribute to the code? Are you going to build your own firmware to run on your printer? If the answer is no, then that’s probably not really a concern that should be driving your decisions.
I agree with most of your points, but I do wanna say that in regards to the last mark, there are reasons besides contributing to the code and building your own firmware to want to use something like Klipper. I’m not a programmer at all but the amount of customization and QOL tools I can achieve compared to what you’re able to do with Bambu’s software is insane. I can never go back to a printer without custom macros
What is a macro in this context that requires custom firmware?
My googling makes it just look like gcode stuff to work around hardware issues, but I’m confused how that requires Klipper, since you can drop any gcode block you want into any slicer I’ve ever seen?
You can drop any block of g-code into your slicer, but that would require running the file to get the commands to run. In Klipper, you can just run the macro.
For example I’ve got a “enclosure heat” macro that
Sets bed temp to 100 and extruder to 280
Turns all fans to max
Moves my print head in front of my webcam (there is an ambient temp display on the print head)
I can do all of these manually, of course, but with a macro I can just push a button and it does all of it.
It also makes it so you don’t have to paste those entire g-code command blocks into whatever file you’re slicing, and so that you can retroactively change commands. (Instead of having the entire startup sequence at the beginning of every g-code, I have a “START_PRINT” macro at the beginning; if I change the macro, all of the files I already sliced will have the updated behavior).
You can run and save custom gCode on Bambu printers. I’ve got a cold pull script that lives happily on my x1c, and can be triggered any time
I don’t use Bambu printers, but don’t they use a modified version of gcode and still refuse to let anyone see the documentation?
Nope, they still use bog standard gCode, but they do have some custom commands for things that are unique to the printer
Oh, that’s neat and I can certainly see why that’s useful.
I have to do a little gcode header swapping by hand because I’m cheap and bought a p1p and am certainly making it do things it’s not really designed to do, and that kind of functionality could save a bit of time.
And even the closed source nature is only partially so. The x1c already has x1+ firmware, and they just made their own custom expansion board to go with the custom firmware.